Why You Keep Sinning Even As A Believer — Romans 7 Explained | R.C. SPROUL Sermons

Ask that we turn our attention to Mark 11:1-11. And I'll ask the congregation please to stand for the reading of the word of God.

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples. And he said to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and as soon as you have entered it, you will find a colt tied on which no one has sat. Loose it and bring it." And if anyone says to you, "Why are you doing this?" Say, 'The Lord has need of it, and immediately he will send it here.'"

So they went their way and found the colt tied by the door outside on the street, and they loosed it. But some of those who stood there said to them, "What are you doing loosing the colt?" And they spoke to them just as Jesus had commanded. So they let them go.

Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes on it, and he sat on it. And many spread their clothes on the road. And others cut down leafy branches from the trees and spread them on the road. Then those who went before and those who followed cried out saying, "Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest."

And Jesus went into Jerusalem and into the temple. So when he had looked around at all things, as the hour was already late, he went out to Bethany with the 12.

We're grateful this Christmas Eve morning to be able to hear a word that comes to us from God himself. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Our Father and our God, give us understanding hearts to the significance of this moment in the life of our Lord and also what it means for us today. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

The beginning of chapter 11, we start virtually the last third of the gospel of Mark. And one of the interesting points, to me at least, of this division in the text is that this third of the entire gospel focuses attention on the last seven days, presumably, of Jesus' life. And in like manner, in John's gospel, if you recall when we preached through it from start to finish, that fully half of that gospel focuses on the last week or so of Jesus' life. Because the gospel writers understood that what happens from the time Jesus arrives in Jerusalem till the time he dies, is raised, and ascends into heaven, all of the energy of God's promise of redemption is focused in that short period of time.

Now, it's Christmas Eve morning, and traditionally on this day, we have some way of celebrating what we call the advent of Jesus. That is, the arrival or the coming of Jesus to this world. But when he came into this world as a baby, he was born to be a king. That's why we talk about the marvelous gifts that were spread at the feet of the Christ child and the greetings that came from on high from the angelic announcements that a king was being born, the king of the Jews, that frightened Herod so deeply. Well, now, after 30 years or so, we have the advent of that king into David's royal city. And do you see the connection then between his advent into the world and his advent into Jerusalem for the purpose of fulfilling the kingly prophecies of the Christ child?

So let's look at this text. "When they drew near Jerusalem to Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives." One technical point here is that it mentions first Bethphage, which means house of unripe figs, and Bethany, which means a house of sorrow. That it seems as though in their journey to Jerusalem, they first go through Bethphage and then to Bethany. And critical scholars look at the intersections of the roads today that come from the north into Jerusalem. They say the order is just reversed. First, you have to go through Bethany, then you go through Bethphage before you can go to Jerusalem. Ah, but what these critics overlook was Jesus wasn't traveling on modern highways. He was traveling on a Roman road. And we know now that the Roman road went just as Mark said that it did. But that's just an aside for those of you who like those little points of dispute.

In any case, they came to the Mount of Olives, and he sent two of his disciples and said to them, "Go into the village opposite, and when you enter it, you will find a colt tied there on which no one has ever set. Loose it and bring it." And so you hear the instructions that Jesus gives to his disciples at this point. Go to the next village, which probably was Bethphage, the house of unripe figs. And he said, "You walk into that village, and you're going to find a colt that's tied up that has never been ridden, and you untie it and you bring it to me." Now, that sounds strange, doesn't it? And it's almost as if Jesus is telling his disciples to go and steal a donkey for him. But that's not what's going on at all. What he is consciously doing is fulfilling the prophecies of the Old Testament where on more than one occasion, the Old Testament prophecies of the coming Messiah said that the Messiah would enter the city riding on a donkey.

We remember how the other gospel writers give a much more expansive report of what happens on Palm Sunday. This is the most brief account that we have in Mark, typically of Mark's fashion of hurrying through things. But we think, for example, of Zechariah 9, where it says, "Rejoice, Jerusalem, your king comes unto you, lowly and riding on a donkey." And so that prophecy was well known among the people who were waiting for their coming king. Most kings in the ancient world rode on great steeds, magnificent horses, like Alexander the Great. But not so the king of the Jews. He was going to come riding on a donkey. And that prophecy that we find in Zechariah really has its roots much earlier in the Old Testament. And let me just take a second to refer back to that.

So this morning, I'm going to be a bit of a flipper. I hear sometimes people say, "Oh, I listened to that preacher last week and he's a flipper." A flipper is one that keeps flipping between different chapters in the Bible and gets everybody confused. But let's look for a second in chapter 49 of Genesis. What we have there is the record of the patriarchal blessing that Jacob pronounced upon his sons. And you remember that the firstborn son was Reuben, but he was denied the patriarchal blessing because of his sin. And then Simeon and Levi were likewise denied. And when he comes then to the great patriarchal blessing in chapter 49, in verse 8, listen to what he said: "Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise. Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies, and your father's children shall bow down before you. For Judah is a lion's whelp. From that day forward, throughout the rest of sacred scripture, the coming Messiah would be called the lion of Judah. It goes on, Judah is a lion's whelp. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He bows down, he lies as a lion, and as a lion, who shall rouse him? The scepter, that is the sign of royalty, shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes. And to him shall be the obedience of the people, binding his donkey to the vine, and his donkey's colt to the choice vine. He washed his garments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes."

So you see that deeply rooted in the Jewish consciousness of the Old Testament was this future hope of the king who would enter Mount Zion riding on a donkey as their coming Messiah. And so now Mark tells us that this is happening, and Jesus instructs his disciples, "Go and get that colt that is tied there and untie it and bring it to me."

Now, in the ancient world, including Israel, they had a concept of eminent domain that was much more limited than we have in our country. But one of the prerogatives of the king was to commandeer a beast of burden whenever he needed it. And so Jesus, as the king, exercises that right here and commands his disciples to go get that colt.

Now, something else is in view here, that it was a colt that had never been ridden. Now, I don't know if they have rodeos in Israel where they ride bucking donkeys to see how good you are, but the donkeys, just like the horses, had to be broken in order to become functional beasts of burden. And the whole principle again in Jewish history was that no one was ever allowed to ride on the king's horse or to ride on the king's donkey. Only the king was allowed to ride on. That's why Jesus specifies here, "You get me a colt that has never been ridden because he's the colt now prepared for the kingdom." And he says, "If anyone says to you, 'Why are you doing this?' say, 'The Lord has need of it,' and immediately he will send it here."

Now, there's a certain ambiguity here when Jesus said, "If anybody asks you what you're doing, you just say the Lord, the curious needs it." Now, that word can mean simply sir, or it can mean master, or it can have the more exalted significance of the supreme ruler and sovereign over the people. It's rare that Mark uses that term with respect to Jesus, but here Jesus uses it for himself. And my guess, and it's not a wild guess, is that he's not simply saying, "Tell them the master needs it," but he's saying, "Tell them that the sovereign one, the king of the Jews, requires that donkey, and immediately he will send it here."

And so they went their way and found the colt tied by the door outside on the street, and they loosed it. But some of them who stood there said to them, "What are you doing loosing the colt?" And so they spoke to them just as Jesus had commanded, and they let them go. And then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes on it, and he sat on it.

Now again, this is the tale that when they brought the donkey to Jesus, his disciples took their garments and put the garments on the back of the donkey as a saddle, as it were, for Jesus. And then we are told in the other gospels as well that the people, when Jesus began his procession, took off their outer garments and threw them on the pathway of the donkey. So that on Palm Sunday, when Jesus makes his triumphal entry into the city, the donkey is walking over a red carpet, as it were, created by the clothes of the people.

Now, that also has its roots in the Old Testament. If I were to say to you, "Who was the worst king in the Old Testament?" Would we have to debate it? Would you hesitate? Isn't there one name that stands above or below the name of every other king? King Ahab, with his consort Jezebel. How they introduced radical paganism and idolatry into the royal court of Israel, and how Ahab sought the life constantly of the prophet Elisha. And his wickedness was so great, Ahab's wickedness was so great, that finally God had enough of it, and he announced to Elisha that He was going to replace Ahab. And so, according to the commandments of God, Elisha took a vial of oil and gave it to one of the sons of the prophets. And he said, "Go to the house of Jehu, for the Lord has commanded that Jehu be anointed king in place of Ahab." And so the prophet came to Jehu and explained to him what the word of God had commanded. And Jehu had no aspirations of royalty, nevertheless submitted to the word of God. And the prophet anointed his head with oil. And all of the followers of Jehu cried out, "Jehu is king!" And then they took off their garments, their outer garments, and put them in the path of Jehu. So as he came down the steps from his court, he walked over the garments of his people. That same principle at the anointing of the king is being used here when the people take off their garments and put them in front of Jesus.

Now, we notice also that when Jesus is involved in this procession, this triumphal entry, it begins at Bethany. And Bethany is where the Mount of Olives is. And the Mount of Olives is something of a misnomer. There, at the top of the Mount of Olives, is the little village of Bethany. And it looks out across the Kidron Valley down to the city of Jerusalem. And the Mount of Olives is 300 feet higher than Jerusalem. It's just a big hill. It's not a great glacial mountain or anything like that. But anyway, the procession starts at Bethany, so what? On the Mount of Olives. So what?

Well, back in 586, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of Jerusalem to Babylon, when Jerusalem fell, God gave a vision to the prophet Ezekiel. And the vision Ezekiel has, what he could see in his mind's eye, Jerusalem and the temple. And in that vision, beloved, he saw the glory of God rise up from the temple. And the glory of God departed from the east side of the city. And the glory of God went up the 300 feet and then came down on the Mount of Olives. When I was in Jerusalem, I stayed on the Mount of Olives overlooking the holy city. And I can remember one night standing out on the patio from our hotel, and all the lights were illuminating the walls of Jerusalem. And I looked down across that Kidron Valley. And I've told you before of haunting memories I had of envisioning David fleeing the old city from Absalom, his son. But on another night, I was looking across the valley and looking into the city, and I remembered that vision of Ezekiel. And in my mind's eye, I saw the glory of God rising up from the temple, hovering, coming from the east gate, then going up to where I was on the Mount of Olives, and then coming down and landing there. Remember the story of Ichabod, when the glory had departed from Israel. This was even a much worse moment of Ichabod, the departure of the glory of God as the people were now taken away into captivity. For the Jewish people, it was a holocaust of sorts, all surrounding the Mount of Olives.

Then we read, "Jesus began this journey, and other people cut down leafy branches from the trees and spread them on the road." We look at that every year on Palm Sunday, of the waving of the palms and so on. And the people crying, "Hosanna," which means "Lord, save us now. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."

Now, here's another little technical point you may or may not be interested in. That some scholars say that Mark compresses the time that Jesus spends in Jerusalem before his death. We celebrate Holy Week as starting on Palm Sunday, and then on Friday is the crucifixion, and then Sunday is the resurrection. But actually, John's gospel has Jesus in Jerusalem for four months before he's executed. And so the idea is that probably Mark is compressing this event, and probably it really took place rather than in the spring, in the fall, during the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, where people characteristically had their palm branches as part of the celebration of that particular festival. We don't know for sure. But in any case, all of the gospels tell us that the people took these palm branches that were symbols of victory and waved them in the air, crying out, "Hosanna, Lord, save us now. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." That the song of the people when their king came riding to them lowly and on a donkey was the first singing of the song "Hosanna" that we sing almost every Sunday here at St. Andrew's when we sing, "Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord."

But there's something very, very strange about Mark's version. After "Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest," we read in verse 11, "And Jesus went into Jerusalem and into the temple. And when he looked around at all the things there, as the hour was already late, he went out to Bethany with the 12." Mark's conclusion of this episode is anticlimactic. It's like, well, he got into Jerusalem, went to the temple, looked around, and went home, went back to Bethany, as if nothing significant had taken place. No, no, no. There's a little detail here that's crucial to our understanding of this event in the life of Jesus.

You know, all along, we've been waiting for Jesus to arrive in Jerusalem. He had set his face like a flint to Jerusalem. We've been looking at that since he announced to his disciples that he was going to the holy city to suffer and to die. But Jerusalem was not his ultimate destination. It was the penultimate destination. His destination wasn't just the city in general. His destination was the temple. He was going to the temple. He was going and looking around at the place where historically the sacrifices were offered. He was going to the temple that replaced the tabernacle, which in its own structure and its use was a living prophecy of the Messiah who was to come. To remember in John's gospel, he begins, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And then a little bit later in the prologue, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." Right? But that phrase, "he dwelt among us," literally in the text says, "he tabernacled among us." Because you see, Jesus is the tabernacle. He's the fulfillment of everything the tabernacle pointed to. He is the temple. "You can tear down this temple," not one stone will be left upon another, "but after three days I will build it again." He was speaking of himself because he is the temple.

And see, he goes to that place that he was born for in Bethlehem. And here is the supreme irony. In 586, Ezekiel saw the glory of God leave the temple, leave the holy city, and come down on Bethany at the Mount of Olives. And now the one whom the scriptures define as the brightness of the glory of God comes from Bethany, comes from the Mount of Olives, goes into the eastern gate, goes to the holy city, and goes to the temple. Do you see it? In 586, the glory of God left the temple, and now the glory of God comes back. But no one understood it, that the King was the King of Glory, who here is about to meet the destiny to which he was called and for which he was born. Do you see how Christmas is, in some measure, fulfilled on that Sunday in Jerusalem?

Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for the way in which every footstep of our Messiah was prepared in the ages and centuries before. That nothing was done without a warrant or without purpose, but he fulfilled all things perfectly in his person. Father, not just on Palm Sunday or on Holy Week, but every time we celebrate the first advent of Jesus, give us remembrance of his coming to Jerusalem as our King. Amen.

As we continue our study on the basic themes of reformed theology, you'll recall that in our last session, we looked at the formal principle of the Protestant Reformation, the doctrine of *sola scriptura*. And today, we're going to look at what the historians call the material cause of the Reformation, the central controversy over which the whole debate raged, which was the doctrine of *solafide*. And the term *solafide* contains this *sola* again, which means alone. And *fide* is the word for faith, coming from *fidelis*. We remember the Marine Corps motto, *Semper Fidelis*, or the hymn *Adeste Fideles*, "O Come, All Ye Faithful." *Solafide* means faith alone. And this was the central assertion of Martin Luther that provoked the serious controversy of the 16th century. And he was speaking to the question, "How is a person justified in the sight of God?"

Now, before we give a brief exposition of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, I want to take a few moments to recap for you the urgency that the magisterial reformers felt about this issue. They did not think that the debate over justification was an argument over some fine point of theology whereby theologians get together and nitpick over secondary issues and so on. But they were convinced of not only the truth of justification by faith alone, but also believed that it was of critical importance. Luther said that justification by faith alone is the article upon which the church stands or falls. Now, we could view that from the vantage point of the 20th century, perhaps, as an exaggeration or as an overstatement. But I'm just mentioning at this point that it was clearly Luther's conviction that this doctrine was so important because it touched the very heart and soul of the gospel itself. And again, it is Luther's contention that justification is the article upon which the church stands or falls. And it's the article upon which we stand or fall because it is the article that we understand that reveals to us how we are redeemed.

Calvin took a similar view of the importance of the doctrine. He used a different metaphor. He said that justification by faith alone is the hinge upon which everything in the Christian life turns. In our own day, J.I. Packer, in his preface to Buchanan's 19th-century work on justification, used another striking metaphor where he likened the doctrine of justification by faith alone to the mythological figure of Atlas, whose task it was to bear the world on his shoulders. And what Dr. Packer was saying with this analogy was, just as Atlas is required to hold up the world, so the doctrine of justification by faith alone is that which holds everything else up.

Well, the controversy, as we know, flared and ended in perhaps the most, not perhaps, but certainly the most serious fragmentation of Christendom in the history of the church, and became the most volatile controversy of all time. Now, again, before I get into an exposition of it, I'd like to read a comment that Martin Luther, a couple of comments from Luther. First of all, an expanded comment of his view of the importance of it, and then second, a comment that referred in later years of Luther's life to his profound concern that the recovery of the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone would be short-lived.

First, his expanded comment on the importance of it. He says, "This doctrine is the head and the cornerstone. It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God. And without it, the church of God cannot exist for one hour." And again, he said, "The article of justification is the master and prince, the lord, the ruler, and the judge over all kinds of doctrines. It preserves and governs all church doctrine and raises up our conscience before God. Without this article, the world is utter death and darkness. No error is so mean, so clumsy, and so outworn as not to be supremely pleasing to human reason and to seduce us if we are without the knowledge and the contemplation of this article."

And then, as I said, in his later life, he made this observation: "There are few who know and understand this article, and I treat it again and again because I greatly fear that after we have laid our head to rest, it will soon be forgotten and will again disappear. And indeed, we cannot grasp or exhaust Christ, the eternal righteousness, with one sermon or thought. For to learn to appreciate him is an everlasting lesson which we shall not be able to finish either in this or in yonder life."

Now, if I can add my own personal observation to those of Luther, Calvin, and Packer, it would be this: that I think that the doctrine of justification by faith alone, of all of the doctrines of systematic theology, is relatively easy to grasp with the mind. It's not that complicated or so arcane or obtuse that only specialized experts in the field of theology can grasp. But to get the doctrine from our heads into our bloodstreams is another matter altogether. Because it is one thing to understand a doctrine. It is another thing to have it be the controlling aspect of the faith by which we live before God. And another thing I want to say before we proceed to an exposition is that we are not saved by a doctrine. It's not faith in the doctrine of justification by faith alone that is what redeems a person. It is the content to which the doctrine points that is so central and crucial to our salvation.

Well, again, we ask, why? The fundamental question that the doctrine of justification is trying to answer, and succeeds in that attempt, is the question, "How can an unjust person ever survive the final judgment of a just and holy God?" And as soon as we ask that question, we see instantly why it is a matter of great importance, not just a question of dotting i's and crossing t's in passing an exam in systematic theology, but it is the question of how are we to stand before God. We remember David's anguish and pathos and poignancy in his question: "O Lord, if thou should mark iniquities, who would stand?" And it was a rhetorical question because David understood the answer to that question. He was experiencing something that we all should experience the moment our conscience alarms us to the presence of sin in our lives. He's saying, "Oh God, if you keep a record, if you keep track, and if you bring this into the judgment, who can stand?" And the answer is obviously, what? No one can stand.

I just had a conversation yesterday with a friend of mine who is Jewish, and he was asking me questions about Christianity and wanted to know what's the basic difference between the Christian faith and his own religious background. And I said to him, "What do you do with your guilt?" And he began to fumble around. And he said, "Well, I guess I just have to keep trying harder to obey the laws, to keep kosher, and to repent when I do wrong." And so on. And then I went on beyond that and I said, "Okay, how is God going to forgive you if no atonement has been made for you other than the sacrifices of bulls and goats?" And that led us into a lengthy discussion of what the gospel proclaims at its heart. Because the good news is that God, according to the Apostle Paul, is both just and the justifier of sinful people.

Now, let's look at those two concepts as they are put together, that God is both just and justifier. Now, both of these concepts have to be clear in our mind if we're going to understand the gospel of the New Testament. The gospel does not say that God simply unilaterally declares forgiveness to everybody in the world. Certainly, the doctrine of justification includes the doctrine of divine mercy and of the remission of sins. That's very important to us, and it sets forth before our eyes a God who is a forgiving God. But I remember when I was a student in the Netherlands, I had great difficulty trying to learn a foreign language in which to do my doctoral studies. And one of the biggest problems I had with the language is the same kind of problem we all have when we learn other languages. And it's the problem of learning the peculiar idioms of a nation or of a particular language. Somebody was talking to me the other day, and he said, "Well, I don't make any bones about that." And one of the people who was standing nearby was a guest in this country. He had learned English, and he was just completely befuddled by that expression, "make no bones about it." He said, "What in the world does that mean?" And we had to explain the nuances of that strange idiom.

Well, one of the idioms that threw me when I was in Holland was an idiom that was used by one of my professors when he was talking about how God responds to the sin of human beings. And he said, "God does not look at sin through his fingers." And I stopped me in my tracks. I said, "I have no idea what he's talking about. That God doesn't look at our sin through his fingers." And it wasn't until much later, when I was trying to practice learning vocabulary by reading Perry Mason novels in Dutch, that I read a little episode in a Perry Mason case where a policeman was talking to a man who was illegally parked, but there was an urgent reason for it, and the policeman was talking to the man about another matter and wanted the man to accompany him somewhere. And the man said, "Well, I can't keep my car here. You're going to give me a ticket for parking in this way." And the policeman, "Oh, don't worry about it. I'll look at it through my fingers." Ah, I said, "We use the expression to wink at it." And the point is, is that when God, in his mercy, offers forgiveness to those of us who were guilty before him, the whole process of divine forgiveness does not mean that God simply winks at our sin and therefore and thereby compromises his own righteous character or his justice. His way of justifying guilty people is worked out from all eternity in such a manner that God himself remains just.

But again, that brings us back to the original question. If God is just, and I am not just, and I have to face his just judgment, how can I possibly stand? What I am in need of most desperately for all eternity is to be justified. Now, what the Bible says is that God is both just and the justifier. So that however he works out his justification, he does it without compromising his own justice. And the second point here that is so crucial is that it is God who does the justifying. Now, that's not difficult to understand. But the implications are clear, aren't they? If it is God who is the one who justifies, what does that say about my ability to justify myself? I can't do anything to justify myself, nor can anyone else justify me in this world, nor can the church justify me. It is God, and God alone, who can pronounce the final verdict of my justification or my lack of it.

So, in the first instance, the reformers of the 16th century insisted that justification is forensic. And so they were teaching what is called forensic justification. Now, this term is a term that is not commonly used in the church. The most frequent place where we hear references to forensics is in criminal trials, on Perry Mason, or the O.J. Simpson trial, or something where we hear about forensic pathology or forensic evidence, or we have state forensics that involve competition in debate and public speaking and so on. Because the term forensic here has to do with some kind of announcement or pronouncement in the arena of law. So when we talk about justification being forensic, we mean by that that in the final analysis, God justifies us when he declares, pronounces that in his sight, we are considered, deemed, or regarded as just. So forensic justification involves God's declaration of a person's being just in his sight. And as I say, it is a legal declaration by which God declares a person just.

Now, I used a string of words a moment ago that I want to elaborate on. I said he judges us, declares us, or deems us, or reckons us, or counts us as just. Now, to get a hold of that, we have to do a little foray now into some simple Latin that we've explained in other courses, but we'll take the time to do it again. It is Luther's summation of the sum and substance of the doctrine of justification by faith alone in his famous slogan, *simul justus et peccator*. *Simul* is the word from which we get the English "simultaneous." *Justus* is the word for just. *Et* is the word for "and." And *peccator*, we get the word from the word "impeccable" or "picadillo" and so on, is the word for sinner. So what Luther is saying is that in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, what is happening here is that those who are justified are at the same time just and sinner. Now, Luther's not engaging in contradiction here. He doesn't mean that we're just and sinner at the same time and in the same relationship. In other words, it's a different sense that we are just from the sense in which we are sinner.

Now, the good news of the gospel, according to Luther, is precisely at this point that what Luther is saying is that the glory of the gospel is that God pronounces people just while they are still sinners. That he declares a person to be righteous in his sight and before his law when, under analysis, they are still sinners. Now, it is that judgment of declaring somebody just, who in and of themselves is not just, that creates so much of the controversy over the doctrine and has led some critics of the Reformation to say that the reformers postulated a legal fiction that has God guilty of lying, saying that somebody is righteous when in fact they are not. But the biblical concept of justification rests upon God's reckoning or counting people to be something that, in and of themselves, they are not. It reaches all the way back to the book of Genesis, to the 15th chapter of Genesis, when God made certain promises to the patriarch Abraham. And the author of Genesis tells us that Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. And what Paul speaks of in the New Testament is this same concept by which God accounts or reckons people who put their trust in Christ as being just, not because their faith atones for all of their sins, or because their faith is such a supreme form of righteousness that it covers all of our unrighteousness, but rather the reason why God counts us righteous is because of the work of Christ in our behalf.

And so I conclude this introduction to the doctrine of justification, which we'll continue in our next session, by saying that really, the expression "justification by faith alone" is theological shorthand for justification by Christ alone, because the fundamental issue is this: on the basis of whose righteousness does God declare anyone just? And the Reformation answered that clearly: that the only grounds by which God will ever view me as being righteous is the grounds of somebody else's righteousness, the righteousness of Christ.

I think it's safe to say that Adolf Hitler wasn't all bad. He may have been one of the baddest of the bad of all of human history. But even in the depths of our sinfulness as human creatures, sometimes by accident, it seems, or unintentionally, we're able to at least outwardly conform to the good as the theologians have defined as civil righteousness. What I was thinking of was that at least Adolf Hitler celebrated Christmas on occasion, and he did it with a generous, kindhearted spirit by which he distributed presents to his friends at his own expense. I mean, he wasn't Ebenezer Scrooge. So, I mean, we have to say that nice thing about Hitler is that he did give presents to his friends. In fact, before he became the Führer of Nazi Germany, he one year gave the same present to all of his close acquaintances and friends, his cronies, people like Goebbels and Herman Göring and Adolf Eichmann and Himmler and the rest whose names have gone down in infamy. That year, Adolf gave each one of them a personal copy of Friedrich Nietzsche's book, *Thus Spoke Zarathustra*. In the German edition of that book, Nietzsche, of course, announced the death of God and called for the birth of the *Übermensch*, the superman, who would take humanity to new heights and to create a new world order. The philosophy that Nietzsche developed under the aegis of this concept of the *Übermensch*, or the superman, was called biological heroism. What he meant by that was that he thought that it was important to weed out the weak, the impotent, the lazy persons of the human race. Nietzsche was convinced that his own century, the decadent 19th-century Europe, needed new leadership that would inaugurate and usher in a new humanity. And so he looked for the creation of a master race of people. And in Hitler's madness, he took Nietzsche's book as his blueprint for creating the Aryan race.

In my lifetime, ladies and gentlemen, it was a matter of serious dispute on the continent of Europe whether Jewish people could genuinely be considered human, or at least fully human. In our own nation, in the 19th century, serious debates were held in conjunction with the issue of the abolition of slavery over the question, "Does the African Negro have a soul? Is that Negro a person or mere property or cattle?" That may sound totally shocking and astonishing to you, but the reality of the situation is that people's humanity can never be taken for granted.

In the realm of philosophy, the subject that has been on center stage in the 20th century has not been epistemology. Epistemology dominated 17th and 18th-century philosophical investigations. It has not been metaphysics, which dominated ancient philosophy and medieval philosophy. The dominant question of philosophy in the 20th century has been the question of anthropology. What does it mean to be *anthropos*? To be man or human? That's been the overarching question. And there's a reason for that. It's not again by accident that the crisis in anthropology followed in history the eclipse of belief in God in Western civilization, where God is no longer at the center of people's thinking. It is inevitable that the question of human dignity becomes a matter of grave concern.

The ancient philosophers tried to give definition to what it means to be human. We know the expression, "If it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, chances are it's a duck." It's like the little boy that went to Sunday school, and his teacher said to him, "Johnny, what is it that is gray and furry and has a great big long bushy tail?" And Johnny said, "Uh, I'm sure you want me to say Jesus, but it sounds like a squirrel to me." Huh. Sometimes we have difficulty giving precise definition to entities around us and in this world. Plato mused over the question, "What is it that makes a human being distinctively human? What separates us from the other animals?" And finally, he, in desperation, defined a human person as a featherless biped. Huh? A duck without feathers. Until one of his students hurled a plucked chicken over the wall of the academy with a sign on it which said, "Behold Plato's man." It was featherless, and it had two feet.

What does it mean to be human? What is man? You remember the psalmist asked that question. Said, "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent, how majestic is your name in all the earth." And when we consider the heavens, the work of your hands, the sun and the stars, and all that thou hast ordained, we inevitably ask the question, "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" But you see, how we understand humanity in large measure controls how we treat human beings, how we value human beings. And so an integral part of any Christian life and worldview must include within it a Christian anthropology, a Christian understanding of what it means to be human.

I keep wondering what my guest is pondering. You know, he hasn't said a word since we started this. He doesn't seem to even be bothered by my constant interruptions. He just goes on pondering more and more, it seems, intently. He's satisfied to be alone. Doesn't have to be in a crowd. But I wonder what he's thinking. Perhaps he's pondering the question that every one of us asks from time to time: "Who am I? What is the meaning of my life?"

The biblical image that is used more often than any other image for human life is an image drawn from nature. This is the image of grass. The grass that grows, it springs up, it's germinated by the cool rains and the warmth of the sun and the process of photosynthesis. It flourishes for a season, but then as the sun beats down upon it, it withers and it dies. Sounds like a very pessimistic view of the matter, doesn't it? But even in the most upbeat portions of sacred scripture, from time to time, the writer will stop to remind us, "Don't forget, all flesh is grass. We live our threescore and ten, then we wither and we die." And in light of the fragility of human existence, we have to ask, "What's it all about? Do we have significance? Do we have meaning? Is there any real value to human life?"

We live in a time, I believe, of unprecedented pessimism with respect to the significance of human personhood. After the Holocaust of World War II, after the camps were exposed, the soldiers returned, France was liberated, it was then that the works of men like Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre began to receive exposure across the world. And Sartre, perhaps the most penetrating dramatist that the French nation produced in the 20th century, he's also a technical philosopher, and he commented frequently out of the milieu of atheistic existential philosophy. In one of his books, I remember trying to secure a copy of it back in the '60s, and I had to special order it to get it because nobody had it in stock in the city of Pittsburgh, and I had to wait months to get it. There was a little book entitled *Nausea*. And the book *Nausea* was Sartre's perhaps most vivid description of the futility and meaninglessness of human existence. His final comment was that man is a useless passion. A useless passion.

A passion, ladies and gentlemen, is a feeling, an intense emotion that we express. Something that consumes us and controls our very being. It's not just a casual concern. You remember Paul Tillich used to say that a person's God can be defined or identified once you identify that person's ultimate concern. That about which you are most passionate, most caring. It's a given about our humanity that we do care about things, don't we? That we have feelings. We hear my little grandchildren fighting with each other and calling each other names, and the one will rebuke the other and say, "You hurt my feelings." I remember when I was a little kid and somebody would insult me, and I would cry and I'd go home to my mother and cry, and she would say, "Listen, don't let these people get you down. Whenever people say unkind things about you, you just go back and you say, 'Sticks and stones will break my bones, and names will never hurt me.'" That was my defense, right? Did you ever learn that? >> Yeah. >> Yes. That that transcends generations, huh? Did they have that in your day? See, they even had it before I was alive. And so I tried it. There was this guy in our town. He used to beat up on me, and I'd come home crying. He would call me all these terrible names. And one day he was calling me all these names, and I looked at him and I said, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me." And what I was thinking inside was, "This is a lie." Because sticks hurt, and stones hurt. But you can get over those. But the insult, the insensitive criticism can paralyze your soul until you die. Every person in this room and every person that sees this film has wounds that have never healed in their souls from something they heard somebody say to them or about them in their lifetime. We care. We feel. We laugh. We weep. We become afraid. We don't just think. Thinking alone does not define the essence of our humanity. In fact, you can even sense in the thinker here that there's not simply cerebral activity taking place, but all that else is communicated here is an attitude. Huh? I'm not sure what the attitude is, but it's certainly not one of frivolity. He is not in a mood of partying at the moment. Huh? He's got different feelings that are absorbing him in this posture. Our feelings change. The one thing about our feelings is that they always change. I always say to the person who commits suicide, if they would have waited 24 hours, they probably wouldn't have done it. How quickly our feelings and our emotions change. But the question that Sartre was wrestling with is, all this caring, all this feeling, all this hurting, all this rejoicing, does it matter? Does it mean anything? And his conclusion was, "No, it doesn't." That we are bundles of passion, bundles of feeling, bundles of care, and all of our caring is nothing more and nothing less than an exercise in futility. It's useless because humanity has no meaning. At that point, when Sartre made that comment, he was merely echoing the philosophy that Nietzsche had propagated a century before. Even

Nichi's biological heroism, he understood to be an exercise in futility because Nichi's bottom-line anthropology was one that could not be rescued even by the appearance of the superman. Because Nichi said, at the bottom, all there is is the kneehill, the nothingness, the abyss that man is involved in a chaotic, endless myth of a recurring cycle that has no definitive origin and no purposeful destiny. Round and round and round we go with no progress and no meaning.

I profoundly disagree with Sartre and I profoundly disagree with Nichi. But I'll tell you what, I have so much more respect for those two philosophers than I have for the dominant species of armchair philosopher that we find in our culture today, the modern or the contemporary humanist. I have to be candid with you. In my judgment, humanism as a philosophy, though it is the dominant philosophy in our culture today, is pseudo-intellectualism. It is a philosophy that I'm convinced does not merit or deserve serious consideration by intelligent people because, bottom line, it's silly.

Well, what do I mean by that? Well, here's what humanism teaches us. The humanist teaches us that the supreme being of this created universe is man. That we are the creatures of highest dignity and value and esteem. And they extol virtues like honesty, integrity, industry. And they march for the preservation of human rights all over the world. The humanists will be in the avant-garde of civil rights, won't they? Because they want to protect the dignity of mankind. And yet, if you ask that same humanist, from whence cometh human dignity, he has no possible answer. Because at the same time that the humanist is telling you how important and valuable and dignified human beings are, the humanist tells us that man emerged from the slime as a cosmic accident and he is moving relentlessly to non-being. His origin is utterly insignificant and his destiny is equally insignificant. But somehow, in between the two poles of his existence, he has all this dignity and value. That's why I say it's silly.

Francis Schaeffer once said about humanists, the humanist, that the humanist has both feet firmly planted in mid-air. The humanist is on a roller coaster without brakes. Humanism is nonsense, but it's persuasive nonsense because it speaks to a need in the human heart. We want to believe that we have significance. We want to believe that we have dignity. We want to believe that our passions matter and that they're not useless. That there is more than the abyss of nothingness of which Nichi spoke. That there's more to life than contemplating, as Camus said, the ultimate question. Maybe it's the question the thinker's contemplating, the question of suicide. It's got to be more than that, the humanist says.

But the humanist lives on borrowed capital. Humanism could only emerge really from a society that had previously been committed to a meaningful origin and a meaningful destiny to the human race. What humanism has done is rejected Christianity and tried to replace their secular worldview in what they have rejected, not realizing that they have rejected the very foundation for the humanity that they seek to extol. And I say to the humanists with all cynicism, if I come from nothing, if I'm going to nothing, I am nothing. And why should I care who sits in the front of the bus or on the back of the bus? Who do I care whether it's white germs or black germs that have rights in this world? I, I, I keep asking the humanist to give me a reason for his faith. I keep asking the humanist to give me one reason why I should treat any human being with dignity other than that he has simply has the preference that I do it. Do you see that humanism is based on sentimentality? It has no metaphysical foundation, no epistemological foundation, and certainly no theological foundation. It is an anthropology with no support based on sentiment.

The Christian worldview teaches that man is totally depraved. That mankind is the most wicked creature on this planet apart from the visitations of Satan himself here. That of all the creatures that inhabit this world, man is the worst. That the great ecological problem with planet Earth is not because of an overabundance of rats, but an overabundance of people. It's people who have plunged the world into ruin. The whole creation groans in travail because of mankind. The whole creation is under a curse because of mankind. And that which is grass is more than grass. It is unspeakably wicked. And mankind, the moral judgment that God gives to mankind, that there is none righteous. No, not one. There's not even one who does good. No, not one. And people don't want to hear that. They say that's one of the reasons they reject Christianity and not only Christianity in general but particularly Reformed Christianity because Reformed Christianity talks about the total depravity of human beings. They're born in sin, original sin. We extol human freedom and its free will, ignoring the fact that the term free will never occurs in the Bible. The concepts there are in terms of human responsibility. Yes. But the emphasis of the Bible is on the bondage of the human heart. It's captive to evil passions. It's not useless passion. Sinful passion is what defines humanity.

Now people say, "I don't want to believe in that kind of a view of anthropology. It's depressing." It's the highest view of man the world has ever seen. There is no religion, no philosophy under the sun that takes sin as seriously as Christianity does. Do you ever wonder why that is? Because we have a morbid fascination with morality? No. No. No. No. Christianity takes sin seriously because it takes people so seriously. And Christianity says it is a serious matter when one human being violates another human being. When one human being hates another human being. When one human being steals or rapes or kills another human being. That's serious and that's wrong.

You see how epistemology, metaphysics fit together, driving us to the concept of God. Our doctrine of God determines our doctrine of man. And our doctrine of man drives us to ethics as an integral and necessary dimension of our life and worldview. The Bible says that man, of all of the creatures, was uniquely created in God's image. That we alone have a profound capacity and ability to reflect and to mirror to the rest of creation the very character of God. That we are called to be mirrors of God's holiness. That's why when we sin, our sin is so serious because not only do we violate each other, but we lie to the creation about the nature of God. We're involved in cosmic treason. We have free will in the sense that we have the power to do what we want. We don't have free will in the sense that we have the power to do what we want with impunity because over and above my free will always stands the sovereign authority and the power of Almighty God. And if your anthropology makes man sovereign, your anthropology is not Christian. You can have man as free, but never autonomous. Remember that God is free and his freedom is a higher freedom than my freedom. I am free only within the limitations of God's freedom.

I hear Christians say that God's sovereignty is limited by human freedom. When I hear them saying that, I make certain assumptions. The first assumption is it didn't come from this guy. The first assumption I make is that that Christian has really never thought about what they've said. They heard somebody else say it and they're just repeating it. They haven't thought about it for five minutes because I'm afraid if they thought about it and then said it, then they wouldn't even be a Christian. Because if God's sovereignty is limited by human freedom, God is not God. That's blasphemy.

So we need to integrate our understanding of man in light of our understanding of God because we get our identity from being made in the image of God. God is not made in the image of man. He is sovereign. We are not. Our humanity is defined by him. And therein we find dignity. We have an origin in the divine purpose of God. We have a destiny in eternal glory that the Father has prepared for us from the foundation of the world. Therefore, everything that happens between creation and consummation matters. There are no useless passions. It matters how we treat white people and black people, Jewish people, any kind of people, because they're created in the image of God and they bear that image even in their sinfulness. We are called to love. To love them as we love ourselves.

We continue now with our study of the work of Christ. In our last session, we considered briefly his atoning death on the cross. And today, we're going to look at the resurrection. And it may seem a little bit strange to speak of the resurrection of Christ as part of his work because the whole event of his resurrection was one in which Jesus was completely passive. He didn't raise himself from the dead, but rather he was raised by the power of the Holy Ghost from the dead.

Now, to understand what went on there in the resurrection, the first thing we have to realize is that when Jesus died on the cross, he was really dead. And when he was buried in the tomb, he was really dead. This was an occasion where the body of Jesus was now a corpse. His spirit or his soul had left his body and was with the Father, but his physical corpse was placed in the tomb. And in the case of that corpse, as well as with any other corpse, there was no heartbeat. There were no brain waves. There was no blood pulsating through his veins. He was dead. And as a dead man in his humanity, he was utterly powerless to do any significant work. And yet we speak of the resurrection as part of the vitally important work of Christ.

Now, to understand that, let me take a moment to look at Paul's statement of these matters in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, beginning at verse 20, where Paul writes these words: "But now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive, but each one in his own order. Christ the first fruits, afterwards those who are Christ's at his coming. And then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom of God the Father, when he puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet. And then the last enemy that will be destroyed is death, for he has put all things under his feet."

And so, in this portion of the apostolic interpretation of the significance of the resurrection, we see the idea that we looked at earlier in this series of the link between Jesus and Adam in the function of Christ as the new Adam or as the second Adam. The first Adam brought death into the world. The new Adam brings resurrection from the dead. And so the supreme enemy that afflicts human life, death itself, is triumphed over with the resurrection. Here we see Christus Victor, Christ the victory. Not that Christ the victor, not only over Satan, not only over sin, but he is victorious over death itself. And not simply for himself. But what the apostle tells us here is that he becomes the first fruits. So that in the resurrection, God doesn't just raise up Jesus from the dead, but he also raises up all who are in Christ who will participate in that triumph over death. That's why the resurrection of Christ is so important to the Christian faith. The fact that we join together for worship every Sunday instead of Friday because Christ was raised from the dead on Sunday. We call that the Lord's Day. And that has become the new Sabbath, the new guarantee of everlasting life for all of those who put their trust in him.

But let's go back now to the resurrection itself. As I said, the body of Jesus was utterly passive. You may see an analogy with Lazarus whom Jesus raised. When Lazarus was raised from the dead, Lazarus contributed nothing to it. You recall that Lazarus had been dead for four days. And when Christ came and raised him from the dead, how did he do it? He didn't go into the tomb and give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Nor did he plead with the corpse and coax the corpse and say, "Come on, Lazarus, get yourself together." No, instead he called with a loud voice saying, "Lazarus, come forth." And at the command of the Son of God, this dead body came to life. And I re-use that analogy because you go back to the dawn of creation and how was the whole universe brought into being? How did life come to pass in the first place? Through the chance collision of atoms in this ultimate slime? No. But through the divine imperative, by the command of the eternal God, the omnipotent one who said, "Let there be light." And the lights came on. The sheer power of his command was what it took to bring life into reality in the first place and what it took to bring Lazarus back from the dead. The same power of God, the Holy Spirit, who hovered over the waters in the beginning to bring forth the gestation of all things. So that same Spirit now comes into the tomb where the corpse of Jesus is situated and bound with the grave clothes of linen, and the Spirit of God raises him from the dead. You think about it. Early that Sunday morning, suddenly the eyelids flutter, the brain waves begin. The heart starts to beat. The blood starts to course through the veins of the slain Jesus. And in the power of the Holy Ghost, he comes out of those grave clothes, out of the state of death, and comes out alive, victorious over death.

It's an interesting comment that the New Testament makes about the resurrection of Jesus that so many people believe is the ultimate unbelievable miracle. The people in the secular world, the skeptic says, "If there's anything we know for sure is that when people die, they stay dead." And so if there's anything mythological about Christianity, it's this central tenet of the resurrection because they say such an event is simply impossible. And yet the New Testament looks at it from a completely different perspective and says it was not possible for death to hold him. Death had no claim over him. Death is the punishment that God gives to living beings for sin. But Jesus was sinless. Now, of course, when he took our sin by imputation on the cross, he was filled with sin, but not of his own. And his own inherent sinlessness gives no authority to death to contain him. So impossible. And it says it's impossible that he wouldn't be raised from the dead. How can death hold a sinless human being? It can't. And so Jesus is vindicated in this act of resurrection.

In the New Testament, it tells us that Jesus was raised for our justification. Isn't that strange? He lived for our justification. He died for our justification. But he also was raised for our justification. So that whole process by which we are made right with God in justification rests upon the person of Jesus through his life, his death, and his resurrection. Why? How does the resurrection bear upon our justification? Well, suppose that all that Jesus did was to live a life of perfect obedience, which we've considered, plus offering himself as a perfect sacrifice once and for all in his death. But how do we know that the sacrifice satisfied God? How do we know that that perfect sacrifice on the cross was acceptable to God? How do we know that this offering of propitiation actually yielded propitiation with the Father? In the resurrection, the Father says that he receives the perfect sacrifice of Christ. He accepts it as his work of justifying the ungodly. The Father is saying in the resurrection, "I am satisfied," and removes the curse from us in the resurrection from the dead.

Later on here in 1 Corinthians, let's start at verse 42: "So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body that's our bodies, any body is sown in corruption. It is raised in incorruption." Again, it was made most vivid with the burial of Lazarus, where we're told that after the four days, there was this terrible aroma escaping from the tomb. The old King James said, "He stinketh." The stench that goes with the corruption of the flesh was part of the reality of the death and the burial of Lazarus. Why did the women go to the tomb early on Sunday morning except to bring their ointments and their perfume to anoint the body of a man who, in death, would begin to see corruption? So the body is put into the grave. It's sown in corruption. But when Jesus is raised from the dead, it wasn't just a resuscitation. It wasn't that just as he was before he died, he went into the tomb and now God raises him from the dead and he comes out in the same shape he was before. No. Yes, there was continuity between the body that went in there and the body that came out was the same body, and it was still identifiable by the marks of the nails and the sword and the like. He could be recognized. But there was also a dramatic change in the body of our Lord from the time he went into the tomb and the time that he came out. When he came out in resurrection, it's not simply that his former body was restored. No, his former body was glorified. And again, listen to how Paul describes it: "It's sown in corruption, corruptibility. It's raised in incorruption." The body that came out of that tomb could never ever suffer decay or corruption in the flesh. Our bodies, when they come out of the tomb and our resurrection, will never again deteriorate. They will never again be subject to the ravages of time and of disease. They will be incorruptible.

"The body is sown in dishonor. It's raised in glory." We've seen along this study that Christ's life followed the pattern of humiliation that moved in the direction relentlessly towards exultation, and even the body of Jesus was sown in dishonor, crucified, but it is raised in glory. You know, I don't know what a glorified human body looks like, but I know it's different from what our bodies are now. Earlier again, the Apostle Paul had said, "All flesh is not the same flesh. There's one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, another of birds. There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies. But the glory of the celestial is one. The glory of the terrestrial is another. There's one glory for the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars. For one star differs from another star in glory." We see gradations, degrees of glory all around us, but we haven't seen glorified humanity. And that's what came out of the tomb. Sown in dishonor, raised in glory.

He goes on, "It is sown in weakness." You know, the Bible extols our creation. The psalmist says, "We are fearfully and wonderfully made." And sometimes, you know, when I reflect on my own life of over seven decades, I'm sometimes surprised to say, "How can this frail body have survived 70 years in this world on this planet with all the diseases, all the accidents, all the things that take place?" That don't you ever wonder about that? But how you could have lived this long because you're that close to death every second? Heartbeat away? Because our bodies are fundamentally weak. They do not have the capacity to sustain themselves indefinitely as far as living forever. We're utterly impotent in our natural condition. We're sown in weakness. Just as Jesus' body was put in the tomb in the weakness of human flesh, but the body that came out left that weakness behind. The body that came out came out in power and in strength.

"There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, 'The first man, Adam, became a living being.' The last Adam became a living, life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of the dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven. And as was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of the dust. And as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man."

Here's the crux of the work of Christ in the resurrection: that he gives us a new humanity. That he restores the original image of God in his people and has prepared them to live forever. Now Paul concludes by saying, "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. But behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For the corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption and the mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory.' Death is devoured, consumed by victory. 'O death, where's your sting now? O Hades, where is your victory?' The sting of death is sin. And the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ."

That's the point of his work. Is that he is raised by the Father, by the power of the Spirit, not simply for his own vindication, but he is raised for us. He may be the first to be raised in this manner, being brought forth in a glorified state, but is by no means the last. Everyone who is in Christ Jesus will share in this resurrected glory. This is our hope. This is at the very heart and center of the Christian faith.

As I was saying, we're going to continue our study of Paul's letter to the church at Rome. And this evening, we'll be looking at chapter 1, verses 18-25. As I mentioned in the morning service today, the attending to the hearing of the word of God and its exposition is an integral part of worship. And so I'd ask the congregation to stand as we worship God by giving heed to his word.

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds, four-footed animals, and creeping things. Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."

Again, if you have ears to hear the word of God, then give heed to what you've just heard. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Our Father, as we examine and meditate upon this portion of sacred scripture which comes to us through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who is also the Spirit of truth, we pray that He would assist us by His illumination that we might understand the full import of what we have just heard, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Of all of the passages that are found in the Bible, I doubt if there is any one passage in all of scripture that I've devoted more personal attention to than the text that I have just read to you. Because this text is so foundational to our understanding of God's revelation and our understanding of the gospel. You can hardly help but notice the abrupt change in the tone of the epistle from what we looked at last Sunday evening, where Paul introduced the theme of the entire book of Romans by speaking of the revelation of that righteousness of God which is by faith to all who believe. And so Paul introduces this epistle by mentioning the main theme of the revelation of that righteousness that is available to us in the gospel. And so after that introduction and the setting forth of the theme of the epistle, I think that we would naturally assume and expect that he would then plunge immediately into an explanation of the content of the gospel and an explanation of this doctrine of justification by faith alone that is so central to the epistle. But he no sooner mentions this wonderful revelation of the righteousness that is by faith that he switches and now introduces another revelation, the revelation of the wrath of God. And there's a method to his madness. I'm sure the reason why the apostle introduces the wrath of God is this point at this point is that no one can really fully appreciate the good news as good news except against the backdrop of our guilt before God. The good news is an announcement to people who universally are under the indictment of God and exposed to his wrath. People are not all that concerned today about the gospel because they don't know anything about the law of God and they are not at all familiar with the revelation of his wrath. If people really were sensitive to this manifestation of God's anger towards them, even if they were not moved by the Holy Spirit, they would be so moved by enlightened self-interest that they would flee as fast as they could to any hearing of the gospel. But our necks have become so hardened, our hearts so calcified that we have no fear of God. We don't believe in his wrath. We think that he is incapable of it. And we listen to preachers everywhere telling us that God loves us unconditionally. And when we hear that, there is no reason to fear his wrath. But what the apostle says here before he develops the theme of the gospel is that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men.

I want to speak to that for a moment. First of all, when he speaks of the wrath of God here, he uses the Greek word orge. If you're a student of etymology of language, you know that the English word that derives from this Greek word orge is the English word orgy. And when we think of an orgy, we think of a situation where people are involved in unbridled erotic and sexual behavior. It is a condition where people are involved in eroticism with reckless abandon, letting their passions be expressed without restraint. And so we wonder what is the point of contact between the English word orgy and the Greek word that Paul is using here for wrath. The point of contact is this: that what Paul is telling us here, beloved, is that God is not simply annoyed. He's not merely irritated, but his anger is a an anger of passion. That there are paroxysms of rage and fury in God for the things that he mentions here. And Paul says God has revealed his fury for what? It is an anger that is directed not against innocence, not against righteousness, but against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Now, think for a second how perfectly appropriate it is that a holy and righteous God would be moved to anger against evil. A good judge who has no distaste for evil would not be a good judge at all. But notice that God is angry with two distinctive things that are mentioned: ungodliness or irreverence, impiety would be another word. The Latin is impietas here. And unrighteousness. And when we think of those two terms, we tend to think of ungodliness as a particularly religious transgression, maybe because of blasphemy or irreverence or the like. And unrighteousness would describe an immoral activity or behavioral pattern among our people. So that we might look at this text and say, "Well, God is mad at two things. He's mad at us for being irreverent, and he's mad at us for being immoral." But I don't think that's the force of the text because Paul is using a grammatical structure here that we find sporadically here and there throughout the Bible. A grammatical structure that is called a hendiadys, which literally means two for one, where two distinct things are mentioned in the same breath, but they are synonyms pointing to one basic thing. And so I think a proper understanding of what Paul is saying here is that God is angry, furious with a particular sin. Then when we examine that sin, it is seen to both be both ungodly, irreverent, and unrighteous or immoral.

Now, those two terms, ungodliness and unrighteousness, are wide and vast generic terms that cover a multitude of sins. But Paul's not talking about a multitude of sins at the moment. He has in view one particular sin. There's one sin that provokes God's anger. And what I want us to grasp here, dear friends, is that this sin is a universal sin. It is a sin committed by every human being. It is that sin that most clearly expresses our Adamic nature, our corruption and fallenness in the flesh. Now, Paul doesn't leave us to guess about the nature of this sin. He names the child. He specifies what it is that provokes God to this orgy of anger. After he says that this wrath is directed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, "who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." There it is. The single sin that provokes God's wrath against the whole human race is the sin of suppressing truth. The Greek word here, the root of the word is the word katakatecho, which can be translated to hinder, to stifle, to incarcerate, to put in detention, to obscure, to suppress, or to repress. If I can use an illustration for the meaning of this, it's the idea if you can think of a gigantic spring or a coil that in order to compress that coil, you would have to use all of the strength in your body to push it down. And all the while you're pushing it down, it's resisting your strength and is forcing against you, wanting to spring back up or recoil into its original position. What Paul is saying is that we're taking the truth of God, and by nature, we take that truth of God and we press it down. We force it into our subconscious, as it were, to get it out of our mind. And yet all of the strength that we use to suppress that truth of God, we simply cannot eradicate it. We can't get rid of it because it is always and everywhere pushing back up, trying to come again to the surface.

Well, again, we're still speaking generally, aren't we? That the specific sin is the suppression of truth. Now, we have to ask, what truth is being suppressed? And again, Paul doesn't leave us to wander in the dark about that question, as he declares exactly what truth it is. Where he goes on to say in verse 19, "because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them." Ah, so the truth that every human being suppresses is the truth of God. The truth that God reveals of himself in nature to the whole human race. We're not talking now about suppressing the truth of God that we learned through the Bible. We do that, too. But he's speaking here of a truth that is known of God outside of the Bible, apart from the Bible. A knowledge of God that God makes manifest. Again, God is angry because what may be known of him is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

I don't want to skip over that too fast. The Greek word here is phaneroo. It means to show plainly. We use the term phenomenon, which is derived from that Greek word. The Latin text here translates the Greek word phaneroo by the Latin manifesto. That is, the knowledge that God gives of himself is not obscure. It's not buried with hidden clues that only an intellectual elite group of people are able to discover after a painful and tedious search and sifting through the evidence. No, it's the truth that God gives of himself that's manifest. It's clear. It's plain. So plain that everybody gets it. He says it's clear. And you know why it's clear? Because God himself is the teacher. You know, we can't say here that if the student doesn't learn, the teacher didn't teach. That would impugn the ability and the integrity of the Almighty, who is the one in his revelation that is showing it to everybody, making it plain and clear.

I mentioned of the young man I talked to at the door two weeks ago whose friend introduced him as an agnostic. The Greek agonos means without knowledge. The agnostic portrays himself as a less militant form of atheist. The atheist boldly declares, "There is no God." The agnostic says, "I don't know if there's a God or not. I'm a-gnostic. I am without sufficient knowledge to make a firm judgment on this matter." The Latin there, incidentally, is ignoramus. And I said to the young man, I said, "You know, you you say that you're an agnostic and you're sort of being gentle about your atheism. You think that you're not as militant and maybe you're hedging your bets, but don't you realize that your agnosticism puts you at greater risk and exposure to the wrath of God than if you were a militant atheist? Why? Because not only do you refuse to acknowledge the God who reveals himself plainly to you, but you're blaming God for your situation, saying he has not been clear. He has not given you sufficient evidence. And so you add insult to injury to the Almighty by your feigned lack of militance. But your hostility against God is coming through and you need to repent of it because you know as well as you know your own name that God is."

I remember being invited on a university campus several years ago to speak to a club that was called the Atheist Club. And they asked me, as a Christian apologist, to give the intellectual case for the existence of God to their group. And so I did. And as I went through the arguments for the existence of God, we kept things at a perfectly intellectual plane where all things were safe and comfortable until we got to the end of my lecture and I said, "I'm giving you arguments for the existence of God, but I feel like I'm carrying coals to Newcastle because I have to tell you what I think. I think I don't have to prove to you that God exists because I think you already know it. And your problem is not that you don't know that God exists. Your problem is that you despise the God whom you know exists. Your problem is not an intellectual problem. It's a moral problem. You hate God." Well, talk about paroxysms of fury. I unleashed it with that. But I didn't back away from it. Obviously, that's what the apostle is saying here. He's saying that God has manifestly, plainly, and clearly shown himself to everyone.

"For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen." The word there in the Latin is the word that is the root for our English word conspicuous. That God has made his revelation of himself conspicuous to everyone since the creation of the world. Wasn't that once in a while, every 3,000 years, God popped a clue into history about his existence? But since the day and the dawn of creation, every moment of creation, God is constantly manifesting himself through what he says here, "the things that are made." Now, it's not just that God gives us a world and said, "Okay, sit down and begin to think about where that world came from and reason from the cosmos back to God." I mean, we do that. But it's more than that. God doesn't just give a world and say, "Guess where it came from." But what Paul is saying is that in that world, every second, God is manifesting himself through the things that are made, so that his testimony to his own nature is plainly evident every second.

You know, the theological question I've been asked more than any question there is is the question, "What happens to the poor, innocent native in Africa who's never heard of Jesus?" I always answer that question the same way. The poor, innocent native in Africa who's never heard of Jesus doesn't need to hear of Jesus. He has nothing to worry about. Don't bother sending missionaries to me to preach to him. You'll probably mess him up. That poor, innocent native in Africa goes when he dies, he goes straight to heaven. He doesn't pass go. He doesn't collect his $200. He has no need for a savior. Jesus did not come into the world to save innocent people. Now, it'll take you more than the lamp of Diogenes to find an innocent native in Africa because there aren't any innocent natives in Africa or in Australia or in South America or in Europe, Asia, or anywhere else. But you see, here's the way people think. They think, well, if they haven't heard of Jesus, then they're surely innocent. No. Again, Jesus comes into a world that is already under the indictment of God the Father because the whole world has rejected God the Father who has revealed himself clearly to them. So let's disavow ourselves of any idea of innocent people anywhere.

Now people again will say, "Well, well, will Jesus will somebody send will God send people to hell for rejecting Jesus of whom they've never heard?" Of course not. God's not going to punish a person for rejecting somebody they've never heard of. Oh, there's this big sigh of relief. Well, then we don't have to worry about him. What do you mean? Their destination is certainly hell for the rejection of the one they have heard of. Because what Paul is saying here in Romans 1 is that every human being has heard of God, knows of God, clearly perceives God, and rejects that knowledge, and because of that lives every day exposed to the wrath of God. And the only possible way he can be rescued from that wrath is through the Savior. And so Paul is setting the foundation for the urgency of the gospel here in chapter 1.

"Since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen." Let me just comment on that. The great philosopher of the 18th century, perhaps the greatest agnostic of all time, Immanuel Kant, revolutionized the world of philosophy by giving a systematic and comprehensive critique of the traditional classic arguments for the existence of God. And without going into the details of that critique of pure reason, Kant argued this way: that you cannot move from the visible things of this world and reason back to the invisible God. God is in a realm that is not known through theoretical reason or empirical investigation. Basically, Kant was saying, "You can't get there from here." Now, if Kant is right, then manifestly the Apostle Paul is wrong. And if Paul is right, then Kant was wrong. And it's time that the Christian church stop rolling over and play dead at the feet of Immanuel Kant and show the error of Kant's reasoning because here the affirmation is so clearly set forth by Paul that the invisible God, even though he cannot be seen because he's invisible, is clearly seen. Now, that sounds contradictory. He's not seen directly, but he's seen through the things that are made because God, who is invisible, reveals his invisible character through that which you can see with your eyes. Even his eternal power and godhead.

So, what is part of the content here of that general revelation we're speaking of? The revelation that God gives generally, that is to the whole world, and it's also a revelation whose content is general. It doesn't give us all the specific details about the character and nature of God, but it certainly gives us knowledge of God in general. And what's included in that content? Well, so far we've seen his eternal power. So God's self-existent, eternal being is revealed in every leaf, every page, every raindrop, every inch of the cosmos since the beginning of time. This temporal world that we see is the vehicle of divine revelation to manifestly and clearly reveal that it is the result of an eternal being. And a God who is not only eternal, but he's eternally powerful. It's his eternal power that is revealed, and his godhead, which we could understand to refer to his inherent attributes, his immutability, his omniscience, his omnipresence. All that fits deity is made clear through nature. We will see later that also included in this content that God reveals of himself is his moral perfection, his holiness, his righteousness, his sovereign right to impose obligations upon his creatures without their permission or assent. God inherently has the eternal right to command from his creatures what is pleasing to him. And so Paul says that all of these things are made clear to us.

But then he goes on to fully explain the reason, the rationale for God's manifestation and revelation of his wrath, "so that they are without excuse." That is, they are given no basis for an apologia, says the Greek, no basis for a response or a reply or an answer to God's indictment. Now, let me ask you, what do you suppose is the answer that Paul is anticipating corrupt and fallen human beings will try to give to God on the day of judgment? "Oh, God, I didn't know. Didn't know you were there. Oh, if only you would have made your revelation clear to me. If only I could have known you, then I would have dedicated my whole life to you and I would have been your obedient servant. But how can you expect me to follow you when you're hidden? You're invisible and I didn't know the gun was loaded. And I'm very, very sorry, my friend." The plea that people will be tempted to make is a plea of an excuse. But Paul says that everyone in this world stands without an excuse. There is no excuse of ignorance before God. Not when he himself has given you the information. So that any plea of ignorance will be an empty plea and will have no effect with God.

And again, why? "Because although they knew God, they did not honor him as God, neither were they grateful." Let me talk about that for just a second. There's one somewhat well-known Dutch philosopher and theologian who came to this text and he said, "Yes, of course, there is a general revelation. God has objectively revealed himself to the human race, but that general revelation yields no natural theology." That is, the revelation never gets through. And they cite Calvin, who talks about man in his fallen condition walking through this glorious theater of nature wearing a blindfold. I think it's unfortunate that the great reformer used that metaphor because it wasn't consistent with everything else he taught about our response to general revelation. But anyway, this theologian goes on to say, "The revelation is there. God does his part, but due to our sin, due to our fallen condition, the knowledge doesn't get through, doesn't penetrate." I mean, doesn't Paul write to the Corinthians and say to them that "the natural man does not know God"? He does. And yet here in Romans 1, Paul says, "The natural man does know God." Now, how are we to reconcile those two statements of Paul? Well, I think the reconciliation is found in the language itself. The word ginosko in the Greek means to know. But it can mean to know intellectually by cognition, which is the Latin term, or it can mean to know intimately, as Abraham knew his wife and she conceived. It doesn't mean to teach that Adam got a dossier of Eve, met her on the street, said, "I'm Adam," and she said, "My name is Eve." He said, "Happy to know you," when all of a sudden she was pregnant. No, it's speaking of a deeper kind, intimate knowledge that the Bible says that those who were born of the Spirit are born unto this intimate, salvific, personal knowledge of God that only the redeemed have. When he writes to the Corinthians, Paul is speaking of the Spirit who gives that kind of knowledge, and he says the natural man doesn't know God in that sense. But in the sense of having an intellectual cognition, cognitive awareness of the reality of God, here Paul is saying, "Knowing God." Their problem is not that the knowledge doesn't get through. The reason why God is angry with everybody in the world is because that knowledge does get through. And it's what we do with the knowledge that provokes the wrath of God.

"Knowing God, they refused to honor him as God. Neither were they grateful." The most fundamental, foundational sin in our fallen corrupt nature is the sin of idolatry. The sin of refusing to honor God as he is. We want to strip him of his attributes, turn him into a God made in our image, a God we can live with, a God that we can be comfortable with. The little old lady after every time I

Preach, this will raise her hand and say, "But my God is a God of love, not a God of wrath." Then your God, who's incapable of wrath, is not the God who is. Because the God of love who is revealed in scripture is also the God who is angry with sin. Who is the God of justice and righteousness? Who's the God of holiness? And you can't just take those attributes of God that you are comfortable with and embrace them while rejecting the rest.

When you do that, you join the throng of humanity that suppresses the truth of God and refuse to honor him as God or to be thankful. The refusal to honor God, the refusal to worship God, and hearts that are not filled with joy and gratitude for what he gives is what defines our fallenness.

Dear friends, how few people there are in this world who delight in the worship of God. Every Sunday morning I go to breakfast. I go out to breakfast. And every Sunday morning after I'm there and have ordered, one of our members from our congregation comes in, sits down at the table right across from me, and we tend to chat over breakfast. And this morning, just as I was ready to leave to come here for the service, he looked at me and he said, "RC, what do you think about all these people that are in here? You know, they're not going to church." And I said, "I know. They're not just here. They're at the country club. They're everywhere but church."

Because nothing is more displeasing to them than to worship God. They don't want to hear about God. That knowledge is suppressed. It's pushed down. It's in jail. It's incarcerated. And they have no desire to have God in their minds. The natural man is at enmity with God. And Paul tells us elsewhere that we by nature do not want to have God in our thinking. And when he presents himself to our minds, we immediately suppress it, push it away.

They did not glorify him as God, neither were they thankful. But what? They became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. You know, not only did I study philosophy and get a degree in philosophy, studied it in graduate school and taught philosophy in the university. And one of my favorite ways of teaching philosophy was doing a study of the history of philosophy. And one of the things that that would stand out to the students who studied the history of philosophy is this: they said, "Really, if you look at some of the most brilliant people who've ever lived on this planet, you wonder how it's possible that people of such titanic intellect could come to such different conclusions about the nature of reality." Who was more brilliant than Thomas Aquinas? Who was more brilliant than Aurelius Augustine? And yet they were fiercely convinced of the reality of God. And their lives were driven by that conviction. Their conviction of God was at the very basis, at the root and foundation of everything else they believed as thinkers.

And then you have a brilliant person like Jean-Paul Sartre or John Stuart Mill or Albert Camus, and you see these people of such gifted intellect ending up clear on the other end of the spectrum embracing nihilism, Nietzsche saying that there is no meaning, there is no God, there is no significance to human experience. How can such brilliant people end up so far away?

Well, listen. If at the very beginning of your pursuit of knowledge, at the very earliest stage of knowledge, the first thing you do is categorically deny what you know to be true, the reality of God, that frankly, the more brilliant you are after that starting point, the more consistent, the more logical you are in your thinking, the further away you'll go from God because you've built your house on a lie. So that your thinking becomes an exercise in futility, and the foolish heart is darkened.

Again, when Paul speaks of hearts that are darkened, he uses the word foolish. And to the Jew, the judgment of foolish is not an intellectual judgment. It's a moral judgment. That's why Jesus said, "Be careful. You don't call people fools." Don't say, "Thou fool," because it's the fool who says in his heart, "There is no God." And there, the fool is not just being stupid, although it is stupid, but he's being wicked because he's denying what he knows to be true.

Here's the indictment for the whole world: Knowing God, they refuse to honor him as God. It's not that they fail to know God and therefore don't honor him and don't thank him. But while they know God, they will not honor him and they will not be grateful. That is the mass of perdition in which we find ourselves as fallen human beings. It's against that background that the gospel comes.

Notice, notice what follows. After the foolish heart is darkened, professing to be wise, they became fools. You know, this really gets to me when I hear this ongoing debate every day on television, every day in a newspaper about intelligent design versus science. Intelligent design, that's not science. Well, the word science means knowledge. And if you know that God is the author of all things, then you know that the affirmation of the existence of God is the purest scientific thought there is. And to deny it or to exclude it is not to be scientific, but to be foolish.

But isn't it funny that those who refuse to acknowledge what they know to be true claim such activity in the name of wisdom? They call it science when it's foolishness. A foolishness that betrays a heart of darkness. And what do they do? They don't become atheists generally. They become idolaters. They become religious. They change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds, four-footed animals, and creeping things. What? The majestic, self-existent, eternal God of heaven and earth. We exchange the truth of God, and we begin to worship birds, bears, totem poles. Can anything be more ridiculous than a religion that builds on a fundamental refusal to acknowledge what you know to be true, and you trade it in? You trade in the glory of God for the creature.

Therefore, God gave them up to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves. And he's going to elaborate on that, and we'll look at that next week, God willing. Who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Beloved, the word here, "exchanged," is a critical term here in the text. It's the Greek word *metallō*. And I read this text, I can't help but read it through the eyes of modern psychiatry, depth psychiatry that talks candidly about terms of repression and suppression. And what you learn, and let me ask you this, what kind of ideas do we tend as human beings to suppress or repress, to push down out of our conscious minds? It's not pleasant thoughts, scary thoughts, frightening thoughts, bad memories. It's why when you go to see the psychiatrist and you have this nameless anxiety and dread that you don't know why you're so phobic, you're afraid, but you don't know what you're afraid of. And so he begins to probe you with analytical questions and checks your background, your childhood. "Well, how did you get along with your mother?" And you say, "My mother, I had a wonderful relationship with my mother. I love my mother." And the psychiatrist says, "Wait a minute. Your words are saying one thing, but your gestures are telling me something else." He'll ask about your dreams. He begins to probe your subconscious because he knows that when you make this repression, you don't destroy the memory. You exchange it. You exchange it for something you can live with, something that will not bring terror to your mind.

And beloved, dear friends, there is nothing in this universe more terrifying to a sinner than God. I know what Freud said. *The Future of an Illusion*, *The History of Discontent*, trying to explain the universality of religion. And Freud said, "Why is it that people are so incurably religious?" He said, "Ah, we've invented God to deal with the things in nature that are frightening. By inventing God, we personalize nature. We sacrifice nature because the things that threaten us so deeply are hurricanes and fires and tornadoes, pestilence, armies." And we know that in personal relationships, that if you're hostile towards me and you come up and you're angry, there are many ways I can try to diffuse your anger. I can try to butter you up and tell you how great you are. "You don't want to be angry with me. I'm the best friend you have around here." If that doesn't work, I try to appease you with my gifts. I say, "Look, if you'll just knock it off, I'll put you in my will. I'll pour money to you. I'll magnify your name to the whole community." We learn how to get around human anger. But how do you negotiate with a hurricane? How do you mollify an earthquake? How do you persuade cancer not to visit your house?

Well, Freud said you have to personalize nature, sacrifice it. You invent a god who's over the hurricane, a god who's over the earthquake, a god who's over the disease. And then you can now talk to God, and you can try to appease him. You give gifts and offerings to him. You say, "I'll serve you the rest of my life if you'll protect me from Wilma and Katrina and all the rest." And so because of the things that are frightening to us in nature, we posit a God who's above nature to help us cope.

Obviously, Freud wasn't there on the Sea of Galilee when the storm arose and threatened to capsize the boat in which Jesus and his disciples were. And you remember the text tells us that the disciples were afraid. Jesus was asleep. And so they went and they shook him awake and they said, "Master, do something or we perish." So Jesus woke up and he assessed the situation. He looked at the raging sea and the blistering winds and he said, "Peace, be still." And instantly the water was calm. There wasn't a zephyr in the air. And what does it say? And the disciples were so grateful and they said, "Thank you, Jesus, for removing the cause of our fear." No. Do you know what it says? And they became very much afraid. Their fears were increased and intensified. And they said, "What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?" We're dealing with something transcendent. We have xenophobia, the fear of the stranger. Here you see the holiness of Christ was made manifest in that boat, and suddenly the fear of the people escalated.

See, that's where Freud missed the point. If people are going to invent religion to protect them from the fear of nature, why would they invent a god who's more terrifying than nature itself? Because he's holy. No. Fallen creatures, when they make idols, do not make holy ones. But we prefer the unholy, the profane, the secular, the god we can control. And so the apostle brings us to that place where we have no excuse, where ignorance cannot be claimed because God has so manifest himself to every creature in this world that every last one of us knows that God exists and deserves our honor and our thanks, and is not to be traded in or swapped for the creature.

Again, let me finish with this where Paul says, "They exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, a creator who is blessed forever." Even when Paul is talking about the wrath of God and the universal sin of fallen humanity, he cannot help but break into doxology, speaking about the creator who is most blessed, even forever.

Well, beloved, Paul will carry on in the rest of chapter 1 and into chapter 2 and tell us about the dreadful consequences to a race of people who live by refusing to acknowledge what they know to be true about the character of God. When you do that, you get a futile mind. You get a blackened heart, and you get a life of radical corruption. You become so exposed to God's displeasure that your only hope in heaven and earth will be the gospel of his dear Son. Remember, this is preparatory. This is the groundwork. Thank God that Paul doesn't stop here in his letter to the Romans because if the Bible stopped here, we would be without hope in this world, lost forever in our guilt and in our sin.

Finally, when I do talk to people about their intellectual questions about the existence of God, I'll be as patient as I know how, try to answer every question they have intellectually and then some. But at some point in the discussion, I will finally say, "Wait a minute. My final question for you is this: What do you do with your guilt?" I don't have to argue with people that they're guilty. They know it. And so I say, "What do you do with it? Deny it? Blame somebody else?" The only refuge from guilt is forgiveness. It's the gospel, which we'll look at more later.

Let's pray. Oh Father, the whole world is filled with your glory. We can't take two paces on this planet without bumping into clear, manifest demonstration of your eternal power and deity. Oh Father, open our eyes to see what's right in front of our face every second. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.